МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ГУМАНИТАРНЫЙ
УНИВЕРСИТЕТ им. М.А.Шолохова
Кафедра английского языка Курс ГАК
Наименование дисциплины Английский язык
Приложение к экзаменационному билету № 3
Mysteries of the universe
Universe has been mystifying mankind for thousands and thousands of years. It’s an inexhaustible source of power, light of life, as well as a one of the permanent center-points of science and culture. The human culture itself is based partially on what the universe provided, like, for example, mythological history of the Earth’s origin, the origin of life on the Earth in all
its species.
But there always remain lots of questions, for example the greatest of them is how old the universe is. The date of the Big Bang has caused astronomers trouble since they discovered that the universe was expanding in 1929. At the time measurements of the rate of expansion suggested an age of a few billion years. Latest figures, using the Hubble Telescope, suggest nine to twelve billion years. But no one knows what had happened before. According to current theories of the birth ob of the universe, not only matter but also time and space into being with the Big Bang. If correct, these theories imply that there was no “before” the Big Bang. However
this proposition raises many fundamental questions.
Another issue is the future of the universe, which seems to depend on how much matter there exists in the cosmos. If it exceeds the so-called critical density, gravity will bring he current cosmic expansion to a halt and trigger a contraction or implosion billions of years from now. Alternatively, the universe may expand forever. After decades of research, astronomers still don’t know precisely how much matter exists in the universe, and so cannot predict accurately how the universe will end. The consensus, however, is that the cosmos will expand for ever.
Are we alone in the universe? Probably not. Just the size of the universe makes it unlikely. This year American astronomers discovered a planet capable of sustaining life just 50 light-years away.
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But alien life almost certainly won’t be like us. Biochemists have calculated that the chances of the chemical combinations necessary to produce life are minute. The possibility that alien life forms will resemble us is zero. NASA is planning a huge deep-space telescope to search to signs of alien life.
While the world seas and oceans have been home to life for over 3 billion years, the origin of 1.4 billion tones of water that they collectively contain remains a mystery. It seems to have condensed out of the early earth’s atmosphere, but how it got there in the first place isn’t known One possible theory is that it was dropped onour planet by comets. These gigantic chunks of frozen vapour and dust are rich in water. According to some scientists, satellite pictures have shown that tiny comets continue to hit the earth, topping up our oceans all the time.
As we can see, examples are innumerable. Countless questions cause countless answers, but the right and proved ones are still to be found.
Экзаменационный билет утвержден на заседании кафедры
« »_______________ 2010 г. Зав. кафедрой___________________
МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ГУМАНИТАРНЫЙ
УНИВЕРСИТЕТ им. М.А.Шолохова
Кафедра английского языка Курс ГАК
Наименование дисциплины Английский язык
Приложение к экзаменационному билету № 2
Tourism
The Romans probably started the tourism with their holyday villas in the Bay of Naples.
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Through the Age of Discoveries traveling not only supported economic needs, but also served to assimilate foreign cultural habits, providing discoveries of new routes, new lands and new horizons.
In the 19th century the education of the rich and privileged few was not complete without a Grand Tour of Europe’s cultural sites. Besides it was a sign of certain welfare if parents could afford studies of their children abroad, or at least provide them with a foreign tutor or governess.
Things started o change for ordinary people in 1845 when a certain Thomas Cook from England organized the first package tour. By 1939 an estimated one million people were traveling abroad for holidays each year.
It is in the last three decades of the 20th century that tourism has really taken off. It has also been industrialized: landscapes, cultures, cuisines, and religions are consumer goods displayed in brochures. Churches and monasteries have been profiting from it along with the travel agencies, giving guided tours, selling goods produced by the monks, granting space for public concerts. When signs of decreasing interest appeared in what concerns the tourist visit rate of museums of national history, a new branch was launched – open-air museums of national
history and culture. They not only inform on the necessary and important facts, but also give an opportunity to participate in primitive manufacturing processes habitual for the national past. These sorts of attractions are extremely attractive for the families of holidaymakers and are the children’s favourites.
The effects of the tourism since the 1960s have been incredible. To take just a few examples:
- The Mediterranean shores have a resident population of 130 million, but this swells to 230 million each summer because of the tourists. In Spain, France, Italy and most of Greece there is no undeveloped coastline left, and the Mediterranean is the dirtiest in the whole world;
- In the Alps the cable cars have climbed ever higher. More and more peaks have been conquered. It is now an old Swiss joke that the government will have to build new mountains because they have wired up all the old ones;
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- In Notre Dame in Paris 108 visitors enter each minute during opening hours while thirty-five tourists buses are waiting outside, their fumes eating away at the stonework of the cathedral;
- In Barbados and Hawaii each tourist uses ten times as much water and electricity as a local inhabitant. Whilst feeling that this is unfair, the locals acknowledge the importance of tourism to their economy overall.
Until recently we all believed that travel broadened the mind but now many believe the exact
opposite: “Travel narrows the mind”.
Экзаменационный билет утвержден на заседании кафедры
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